Butterflies of creamy yellow and sky blue flit among cabbage palms, wax myrtles and oaks, past roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets and night herons feeding at the edge of an old shell-mining pit.
Since 1993, Hillsborough County's Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program, in cooperation with the state and the Southwest Florida Water Management District, has been working to restore the 3,300-acre Cockroach Bay Aquatic Preserve, a vast expanse of coastal wetlands and uplands at the southern edge of Tampa Bay.
The restored areas are valuable not only to birds, butterflies and mammals, but to Tampa Bay itself. The wetland vegetation acts as a kidney, cleansing stormwater runoff from roadways and neighborhoods before it reaches the Bay.
"Most of this was an impenetrable forest of exotic plants," said aquatic preserve manager Richard Sullivan. Those fast-growing plants muscled out the native species, which, in turn, drove away the wildlife.
Pine trees, palmettos, beauty berry and wax myrtles have been returned to the upland areas. Songbirds, bobcats and butterflies now thrive there. Old mining pits are being filled in and transformed into shallow wetlands that provide foraging grounds for black-necked stilts, reddish egrets and white ibis.
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